Coach Coryell a football man — period

Jerry Magee worked for the San Diego Union and later The San Diego Union-Tribune from 1956 until his retirement in September 2008. He covered the Chargers and the NFL starting in 1961 and in 1987 was honored with the McCann Award, presented each year at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He lives in San Diego.

*-Team won conference or division title (SDSU was independent in 1968)

When Don Coryell came to the Hall of Champions last year for a function honoring Fred Dean, he told me he had been found to be dyslexic. It had to be hard for him to say it, because he had a lisp and because he never would seek sympathy.

Hearing this, my regard for Coryell’s coaching expertise, already high, bumped up a couple of additional levels. Stunning, that the man did what he did despite a reading disorder and a speech impediment. More than anything else, in my thinking, Coryell’s career taught us what an individual can achieve who directs all his energies into a single area.

Coryell was a football man. Period. One time, one of his players ventured into his Qualcomm Stadium office and brought up something that was in the news. “If you’re not going to talk about football, get out of here,” Coryell fumed.

I should note that as a delegate of the San Diego Union, I was around Coryell for every game the Chargers played from the fourth game of the 1978 season, when he replaced Tommy Prothro as the team’s head coach, through the eighth game of 1986, when he resigned.

The Chargers — again, this is my thinking — had emasculated Coryell by naming Al Saunders as a co-coach weeks before his departure. Coryell, I would argue, should have been treated more respectfully. He stepped aside quietly, saying he would not be returning to coaching. He soon could be found, but not easily, on one of the San Juan Islands in the Strait of Juan de Fuca off the coast of Washington, where they don’t get American television and a newspaper comes only once a week. The nearest town to Coryell’s home was Friday Harbor, perhaps because it is open only on Fridays.

On football fields, Coryell was a holler guy, all energy and commitment that he would express in the clearest terms. But he could be the most private of persons. I can’t remember ever having a conversation with him when he would remark on his feelings. His means of refreshing himself was to backpack through the High Sierra.

“I would lay there at night, several hours a night, looking at the stars and thinking,” Coryell once told me. “It’s a good way to clear your head and really think. During the day, you’re so occupied. Your legs are so damn tired and your shoulders ache and you’re sweating and you don’t have enough water and the bugs and mosquitoes are chasing you.

“But at night, everything quiets down, and that’s good. You’re away from it, just relaxed, and you can, I think, think very clearly.”